“Can you recommend a restaurant?” I ask the woman behind the desk. “Someplace we can get a cold beer?” She nods as if this were a familiar question. My husband and I stand in the lobby of the Super 8 Motel at the western edge of Iowa—after a 500-mile drive in ninety-degree heat.
“The B&B Roundup,” she says, “down Main Street, on your right.”
We look for a bunch of cars out front but discover that the regulars are parked in back. The bartender looks about fifteen but knows her way around the drinks and the drinkers. The beer is very cold and I think I might be able to do another 500 miles tomorrow.
Finally we order a couple of salads and inquire about dressings. “We make our own ranch,” the bartender says. “With buttermilk, every day.” The dressing tastes fresher than the lettuce, but I don’t mind.
A pair of horns from a longhorn steer hang above the bar. People are wrong when they say that places in America are losing their regional differences. Where I live, we tend to put moose heads on the wall—but it’s the same kind of place. One-of-a-kind place.
Nobody could franchise these local hang-outs. It makes travel worth the effort and home more like home. True, there’s fast food everywhere but there are B&B Roundups everywhere, too.
The locals know where they are and we park in back.